Tag Archives: Waste

David Suzuki once again making a very important and seemingly obvious notes about how we humans focus so much on oil and other fossil fuels as the primary source of waste, when we’re also wasting our FOOD!

By David Suzuki with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Research Scientist Scott Wallace

Lick the plate: The ecological and economic costs of food waste

Thanksgiving is a time to gather with friends and family to appreciate the bounty of the fall harvest. Eating is both a highly social and personal part of our lives, and food preferences can even make for lively dinner table conversations.

In North America we tend to focus on how food is grown and harvested. Consumers face a myriad of labels when they shop for Thanksgiving feasts — organic, free range, cage-free, Marine Stewardship Council, fair trade, non-GMO, vegetarian-fed and locally grown among them. From a sustainability point of view, though, the most important question is missing from these labels: Will this food be eaten or will it end up contributing to the world’s growing food-waste problem?

We’re hearing a lot about food waste lately. Every year a staggering one-third — 1.3 billion tonnes — of the world’s food is wasted after it has been harvested: 45 per cent of fruit and vegetables, 35 per cent of fish and seafood, 30 per cent of cereals, 20 per cent of dairy products and 20 per cent of meat. Food waste ends up in landfills, increasing methane emissions and contributing significantly to climate change. A recent study found Americans waste close to $200 billion on uneaten food while Canadians throw away $31 billion.

These figures only account for 29 per cent of the full cost of waste. They don’t include factors such as labour, fuel to transport goods to global markets, inefficiency losses from feed choices used to produce meat and fish, or food left unharvested. As methodologies are improved and accounting becomes more inclusive, we’re likely to find even higher waste figures. Dozens of studies across many countries with different methodologies not only confirm the increase in food waste but suggest food waste is even higher and on the rise. In Canada, food waste cost estimates increased from $27 billion to $31 billion between 2010 and 2014.

In a world where one in nine people doesn’t get enough to eat — many of them children — this is unconscionable. According to the World Food Programme, poor nutrition kills 3.1 million children under the age of five every year. It’s the cause of almost half of child deaths in that age range. When it comes to feeding the world, distribution and waste appear to be greater problems than population. And yet we continue to destroy more forests, drain more wetlands and deplete the oceans of fish to meet the needs of a growing world population.

Not only that, the monumental economic losses from food waste represent money that could be used to fund much-needed social and environmental programs. Money lost in North America would cover most of Canada’s federal budget. Food waste in Metro Vancouver homes adds about $700 a year to a household’s grocery bill.

Every morsel of food wasted represents unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions, conversion of natural ecosystems to agricultural lands and disruptions to marine food webs. Based on 2007 data, the UN estimates that the equivalent of 3.3 gigatonnes of CO2 emissions globally can be attributed to food waste. Canada’s total emissions, in comparison, are about 0.7 gigatonnes. If food waste were a nation, it would be the world’s third-largest emitter.

We need to tackle food waste at all levels, from international campaigns to individual consumption habits. In September, the UN agreed to an ambitious global goal of reducing food waste by 50 per cent by 2030 as both an environmental and humanitarian imperative. Earlier this year, Metro Vancouver joined the international effort Love Food Hate Waste to meet municipal waste goals and encourage individual behavioural change. A similar U.K. campaign led to a 21 per cent cut in food waste over five years. Grocery stores in France and other countries are offering discounts for misshapen produce under an “ugly fruits and vegetables” campaign. Businesses are using audits to map out where food waste is affecting bottom lines.

Food waste is a crime against the planet and the life it supports. Reducing it not only addresses food insecurity, it benefits everyone. This Thanksgiving dinner, whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, carnivore, locavore or pescetarian, plan for a zero-food-waste meal. Show thanks for ecosystems, growers and harvesters by buying only what you will eat and eating all that you buy.

By David Suzuki with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Research Scientist Scott Wallace

Simon Fraser Universities Burnaby campus art gallery is currently showcasing work from the artist Chris Jordan which is titled “Running the Numbers: An American Self Portrait” which I felt was an astounding step towards opening the eyes of the consumer, in a way that makes them realize the extent of the damage done by being such.

His work exhibits the scale at which America consumes items such as Barbies, cell phones, plastic bottles, cars, and so on. Each one is labeled with a time frame, like America retires 426000 cell phones per day, and it shows the expanse of the waste that is built up. With a situation like this, our world will slowly be piled higher and higher with plastic and consumed garbage that will overtake us and we will have no choice but to immediately start resistance action.

I will showcase a few of his photographs here, but it really doesn’t do the expanse of his projects. These should be viewed on 20ft x 20ft prints and still you have to go in really close to see the exact detail of the photograph because the extent is simply far to great.

If you go to his website, but you can view interactive photographs that let you zoom in to really see the intricacies of them.

Above is some crazy number of inmate uniforms in the USA per day.

To be honest, I really haven’t detailed what the photos all mean, and hopefully you will find them interesting enough to check out his website to find further information.